(Jeremy Silver)Concert highlighting the talents of an unusually gifted husband and wife team. (Review by Michael Green)
An unusually gifted husband and wife were the principal performers in the second concert, in the Durban City Hall, of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra’s winter season.
Jeremy Silver is an English conductor who has built a substantial reputation over the past 20 years. Sally Silver, his wife, is a soprano of distinction, with an impressive record in opera in particular. She and her husband live in London but she grew up in Durban and had her early musical training here (we knew her as Sally June Gain).
With the KZNPO, they presented Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, written in 1948, a year before the composer’s death at the age of 85. These are beautiful songs, a memorable farewell to a long life. The English titles are: Spring, September, Going to Sleep and At Sunset.
Obviously they are melancholy, but their soaring melodies and rich orchestral part make them inspiring rather than depressing. Sally Silver has a pure and powerful voice, particularly in the upper register, and she sang with emotion and commitment.
Jeremy Silver conducted with appropriate restraint and drew forth a sympathetic interpretation from the orchestra. A word of praise for the orchestra’s four horn players, who had important roles in these songs (Strauss’s father was himself an accomplished horn player).
The concert opened with the ethereal Prelude to Act 1 of Wagner’s Lohengrin, and after the interval we had Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 in E minor. This work, written just over a hundred years ago, is a romantic outpouring of music in Rachmaninov’s irresistible style: long, sweeping phrases and brilliant orchestration. Jeremy Silver conducted with expressive animation and obtained a lovely, balanced performance from the orchestra, especially in the Adagio, a kind of love song which is the heart of the symphony.
It is a long work. It lasts nearly an hour, but the time seemed to pass very quickly. - Michael Green
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